Coach Dallas Eakins wasted no time in putting his team through the conditioning ringer this morning. Each group of players went through endurance testing with numerous ‘down-and-back’ skates through timing equipment. It was tough.

“It was tough, man,” Hall told me after his skate. “I don’t think there’s really a way you can get prepared for that test. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into that. My legs on the fifth and sixth ones were burning pretty bad. It’s good that we got that out of the way. I think we can just focus on hockey now and really get prepared on what we’re here to do, and that’s win games.”